The College Thing
by Quincy Connally
Summary: Hollyhock deals with a traumatic event at school.


Hey Journal.

Listen, I know I've kinda been neglecting you for a while. My therapist is always telling me I should write my thoughts in a journal as a way to track my mental state, but I feel like I have enough homework, you know? Therapy is stupid anyway. If you think about it, we as a society understand mental problems about as well as medieval doctors understood dentistry, so the best we can do is try to talk people out of feeling bad and hope it takes with enough repetition. Still, I had this notebook with me, and I'm sitting on this five-hour flight just bored out of my skull, so I thought, why not have _one_ week where I can show Dr. Kasner I did what I was supposed to do? It's all going in the garbage with a match afterward, so what's the harm, I guess?

So, hey Journal. Nice to finally meet you, and all that. I'm Hollyhock. Hollyhock Manheim-Mannheim-Guerrero-Robinson-Zilberschlag-Hsung-Fonzerelli-McQuack. You're actually the first to hear that in a long time. When I was a kid I wore my stupidly long name with pride, even though I was sometimes picked on for it, or for my unusual family, or just for being adopted. I thought I'd be proud at college, too, but then at orientation a girl turned to me and said, "Hey, what's your name?" And in that instant I realized that at home I couldn't have escaped my dumb name if I wanted to. Everyone there already knew who I was, but here, in Middlesex, Connecticut, for the first time in my life I had a clean slate, and with a couple words I'd never have to deal with any of that ever again. So I opened my mouth to answer, and the answer that came out was, "Hollyhock Manheim." And that's who I've been ever since. I still haven't told any of my dads.

There you go, Journal. You've become the bearer of one of my great secrets. Might as well get the rest of them.

I entered Wesleyan with my major undecided. Freshman year, I took those introductory film courses and liked them well enough, so I applied for the film studies major and got in. Fall of sophomore year, I took film production and made this artsy film about, I dunno, death and rebirth I think, the kind of film where there's no dialogue and every shot is from a weird angle and there's lots of filters. My classmates liked it, or they said they did, and I got a good enough grade, but all I could think was that I was a fraud, like I'd pulled one over on all of them, put this sequence of nonsense in front of them and dared them to find all this meaning where I saw none myself.

Later that year was when I fell into the slump. You know what I'm talking about. It didn't help that I broke up with my boyfriend around that same time, but I believe the slump afflicts all art students sooner or later. It comes soon after that moment when they start to think, "Wait a sec, what am I going to actually _do_ with all this?" It all got tiresome, the classes, the hours of dry reading, the analysis papers about Francis Ford Coppola or whatever. Sometimes I'd skip all my classes just because I couldn't summon the energy to get out of bed. I spent days at a time in my pajamas, browsing videos and eating delivery pizza in my dorm room. My grades started to slip, and when my dads noticed, they set me up with Dr. Alton Kasner, my therapist. I've been seeing him once a week ever since.

So now it's junior year, fall semester. Around the third week of classes, my session with Dr. Kasner went something like this.

"How are your classes going?" he would usually start by asking.

"All right, I suppose," I would often reply. "I've got my first paper to write, for my Martin Scorsese class. I'm doing it on The Wolf of Wall Street."

"Have you started it yet?" Like he was my schoolwork coach.

"Nope."

"Do you know, roughly, what you're going to write about?"

"Roughly. Something about the self-destructiveness of an excessive lifestyle."

"So what's the problem?"

"I don't know. It's that mental block. I feel violent, almost physical revulsion, like nausea, any time I even consider looking at a word processor. If I do manage to force something out there, I feel like it's all garbage"

"Your self-doubt and insecurity is working its way into your feelings about your own work."

"I dunno if that's it. It's more like, I've been doing these papers so long that it's started to feel like … like it's all bullshit, you know? Who can really say what a bunch of dumb movies that aren't even real mean? We're all just making it up."

"Well, you're a film studies major, so you must believe on some level that film is a form of artistic expression worth studying."

I looked off and didn't say anything.

"Hollyhock," he said in that comforting tone he did, "sometimes people tend to minimize their achievements and maximize their failures. You've gotten good grades, made a good film, but you don't feel you deserve credit for any of that because it's 'all bullshit' as you put it. But it's not bullshit. You've got to be able to feel proud of yourself."

"Maybe," I said.

By Sunday I still hadn't written anything. Sunday nights are when I'm supposed to call my brother, BoJack. You've probably heard of him, BoJack Horseman, he's a famous celebrity and also a dinosaur who doesn't want to get on social media, so instead of Facebook chatting him every day like I do with everyone else in my life, he insists on setting a time each week to talk on the phone with no distractions. I'm surprised he doesn't use a landline. Usually I'd go out on my veranda while I talked to him, just to get some fresh air if it wasn't too cold out.

When I mentioned the paper I was ostensibly writing, I could hear his scoff through the line.

"God, Lernernerner DiCapricorn," he said. "I saw that guy's date break a champagne glass on his face one time at a party."

"You _met_ Lernernerner DiCapricorn?" I said.

"Well I dunno if you'd say I _met_ him, but I have been in the same very large room with him and also a bunch of other people."

"That's still pretty incredible," I admitted.

"Yeah. So what did you think about the movie?"

"I dunno. It's about this guy who got rich on shady stock trading and lives a life full of sex, drugs, constant partying, and yachts." I resisted the urge to add, _Sound familiar?_

"Okay, so, what's the point? Why is Martin Scorsese showing us this movie he's made about some rich asshole?"

"Yeah, that's the thing. The whole thing's got this irreverent humor going all through it, and I'm not sure if it's some witty satire of greed or if it's just straight-up showing us how awesome it is to rake in millions and buy mountains of cocaine."

"Most people think it's that first thing, but there are some who think it's the second."

"Okay, so what do you think?"

"Hey, it's your homework, isn't it?" He chuckled a bit, then stopped and cleared his throat. "All right, so, the movie doesn't just show us some guy's life of excess. The movie revels in excess, with its three-hour runtime, its five-hundred sixty-nine uses of the word 'fuck,' and its hundred fifty-five million dollar budget which, by the way, _may_ have come funds diverted from that 1Malaysia thing … The movie itself draws us into that gluttonous mindset, and we take from that what we will, for better or worse."

"But … isn't it a little irresponsible to make us maybe sympathize with this criminal who cheated people out of millions of dollars?"

"Cheated some Wall Street bankers out of millions of dollars, anyway."

"I guess."

"Anyway, this all sounds like stuff _someone_ could argue really well, one way or the other, in, I dunno, some kind of paper."

"All right. Thanks for your help, BoJack. How's your thing coming?"

"Ugh, it's the worst!" His mood seemed to turn on a dime. Somehow or other he'd been given the lead role in some ads being produced by a non-profit, some advocacy group for the advancement of Crustacean-Americans. When I heard about it I thought the same thing you're probably thinking now: I wouldn't have thought Crustacean-Americans needed an advocacy group, to which BoJack very smartly replied that that those guys did used to get boiled alive a lot.

He went on, "I thought the script was a little too dry and serious"—ads for non-profits generally are—"so I went to the director to pitch him some BoJack Horseman snarky quips and witty gags, just, you know, to help the message come across more smoothly. Would you believe he wouldn't hear me at all? I don't know how I can be expected to work with a director who doesn't see my potential, or, for that matter, how to make an ad that doesn't bore everyone to suicide."

"I'm sure you'll be all right," I said. "But look, you might not feel like you're doing a good thing, but the Crustacean-Americans really appreciate it. You're allowed to give yourself some credit."

"Eh, maybe." And there was that long pause, the one that told me he was staring off into the middle distance, thinking of heavy shit to lay on me once again.

"Maybe, I guess, it's just … is this all I am?" Here we go. "I could be out there, I dunno, teaching English to kids in Somalia or working with refugees or something, and instead I'm playing pretend in front of cameras because … I don't know, because it's the only thing I know how to do. Do you get what I'm saying?"

I took a deep breath. "BoJack … sometimes people tend to minimize their successes and maximize their failures. You've made some great movies, and you're helping those crustaceans who apparently need it. You don't need to be so hard on yourself. Have you thought about keeping a journal for thoughts like this?"

"Now you're starting to sound like Tara. I think I've got enough work to do, thank you very much." Tara's his therapist. "You know what she's trying to get me to do now? She's got this wilderness retreat thing, six weeks out in the desert, like _that'll_ somehow be good for me."

I could hardly contain myself. "She wants you to go _camping_? You, BoJack Horseman?" I could imagine BoJack camping about as readily as I could imagine my friend Johnny buying a Prius.

He was surprisingly indignant. "I'll have you know I could _easily_ go camping if I wanted to, I just don't want to because camping is stupid. It's a stupid way for stupid people to prove their worth by enduring mild discomfort. And anyway, it's not camping. The cabins are equipped with electricity, plumbing, and WiFi."

"So it's more like you're going to a resort for six weeks." As dumb as it sounded, I couldn't help but think it might not be a bad idea. It's not like some fresh air and sunlight could _worsen_ his disposition. "Maybe give it some thought. If your therapist thinks it'll help you, who knows? Maybe it will."

Last year, after BoJack's latest girlfriend dumped him, he called me every single day for over a month, some days more than once. I really wanted to help him, especially since it looked for a while like he might start using drugs or alcohol again, and that's why I didn't want to admit how much the whole thing stressed me out. I nearly had a nervous breakdown, and I gained ten pounds from overeating. Dr. Kasner had something interesting to say about it. He said supporting BoJack through hard times was great, but I couldn't be expected to heal BoJack all on my own, and he said that BoJack couldn't be dependent on me, and he had to learn to stop using me as an emotional crutch. I didn't totally buy it, but maybe that was because it was a little bit creepy to think about BoJack seeing me that way.

The next Friday, my friend Lisa came by my room with a bunch of other girls. Some seniors over in the off-campus housing were throwing an upperclassmen party and they wanted me to come along. I'd of course been through all the social rigmarole in my freshman and sophomore years, and truth be told I was getting pretty tired of it. However, with depression sometimes you just have to force yourself to get out there instead of insulating yourself in your misery, so I agreed to go.

We arrived, the whole big group of us, and an elephant answered the door and let us inside. Right away it didn't look any different from any other college party I'd been to—there were the dim colored lights and the loud music, people hanging out in their groups, some of them dancing, but not quite packed wall-to-wall (or not yet anyway). On one side of the room were some couches around a coffee table where some guys and girls were sitting and chatting. Every inch of the table was occupied by bottles and glasses. Most of my group broke off, but a few of us, myself included, decided the spot with the booze was as good a place as any to start the night. One of the guys, a mountain zebra by the looks of him, looked up at me and smiled. He was wearing the school's red-and-black football jersey, loose on him without all the padding underneath, and he still smelled of musk from that evening's game. His eyes lingered on mine, and after a moment he said, "Professor Eisner's art history class, right?"

I blinked. I _was_ in that class, and now that he mentioned it, I did remember seeing him there. It was the sort of class that went over the pyramids and the Parthenon and Greek statues and whatnot.

"Yeah," I said. "You too?"

"Yep. My name's Davey. Davey Withers."

"Hollyhock," I said. "So … you're into art history?"

He shrugged. "I'm only taking it for an elective, but yeah, it's pretty cool. Pretty interesting to see how people made those buildings in the days when they had to drag huge stones on wood tracks across the desert. I'm a physics major, you know, and I've already got some engineering job offers lined up for after I graduate."

He grabbed a bottle and lined up some glasses on the table. He filled a glass for each of us halfway with seltzer and the other half with vodka. I finished my glass, then another and another as Davey regaled us with stories of hard engineering projects and daring football plays. When he got up and said he was ready to dance, my heart gave a flutter when he asked _me_ of all people to join him. I couldn't help but say yes.

I learned to dance from a young age from Papa Dashawn, but nothing he did was anything like the sort of dancing we do at college. If he could have seen it he'd have probably burst a blood vessel. Our dancing was sensual and intimate, lots of bumping and grinding and feeling each others' bodies—what are social gatherings for, if not social contact? And after a few songs I was really getting into it with Davey. He was confident and passionate. A half hour in we were both sweating.

He went to get some water while I sat down. He came back a few minutes later and said to me, "A few of us are going upstairs to get away from the noise. You wanna come?"

Now you're probably thinking that would be when some alarm bells start to go off, but they really didn't. In fact it felt pretty damn good to have a cute boy wanting to spend time with me. It felt like I was worth something after all, you know? And besides which it _would_ be nice to get away from the crowd and recharge a bit. So I took his hand and we went upstairs. I glanced back at Lisa as I went, but she didn't even see me.

Davey was right in that there were small groups sitting in the hallways and rooms upstairs. But instead of joining any of them, he led me into an empty bedroom and shut the door behind us. Surely _that_ must have sounded some alarm bells, right? Maybe a little, but I still didn't think much of it. I checked out some of the stuff in his room. Football trophies, natch, but also some honors certificates and a Dean's List award, not to mention a large poster for the show Breaking Bad. On his dresser he had one of those metal globes suspended over a magnetic plate, the kind every engineering student has to have made at one point or another. I gave it a spin. It looked pretty cool.

He sat on the two-seat sofa. I sat beside him, and he kissed me, and I kissed him back. But then he stuck his hand down my pants, and all those alarm bells I've been mentioning? Yeah, they were going off at full volume all of a sudden. I pushed away and said, "Hey, I don't think—" but he just cut me off with a hand to my mouth and said, "Come on, we're just getting into things, come on, please, I want you, Hollyhock …"

He pushed me back against the arm of the sofa, pulled my pants down, then with one hand clamped my muzzle shut while the other pinned my wrist to the couch so tightly I couldn't move at all. I tried to push back, but I was helpless under his weight. I went limp, lifeless, trying to just endure the pain until he finally finished, grunting and heaving, and fell back onto his side of the sofa.

He said, "God, Hollyhock, that was great …" and I just stared back at him. There were tears in my eyes, but I tried not to cry aloud—even then I didn't want him to see my weakness. He noticed anyway and said, "Hey, come on, that was fun, wasn't it? You know we both wanted that," and still all I could do was stare back at him, sucking in my tears. He looked a little sterner and said, "When we go back out there, you're gonna be cool, right?" I nodded. What else could I do? He put his pants back on and left, closing the door behind him.

A little while later, I went back, too. Davey was off somewhere else now; I sat back on the couch around the drinking table, but when I picked up my seltzer-vodka, the smell of it alone nearly made me vomit. One of Lisa's friends gave me a look almost resembling concern, but I couldn't stay there any longer. I put the drink down and left the house.

What I wanted more than anything was a nice long shower. My whole body and spirit ached to just shut myself in somewhere safe, but I was worried about my wrist, so I had no choice but to make my way to the medical center. I didn't know what I was going to say to them. I didn't want to admit what really happened, but I also didn't have it in me to make a convincing lie, so I said it was a "rough sexual encounter." They seemed to catch my drift, because they asked if I wanted to get, you know, the kit. I didn't know if I did want it, but they said it was only for evidence collection and that in itself it didn't obligate me to pursue the case or anything. In the end I just let them do it, although parts of it were almost as invasive as the act itself had been, as they swabbed every part of me inside and out.

They finished that up as well as the physical exam (turned out my wrist was just badly bruised). I went to my dorm, got in the shower and turned up the water until it was nearly scalding. I scrubbed myself head to foot at least three times over, and I was sitting in my room in my bathrobe when I heard running footsteps approaching my door.

The door burst open, and Papa Greg was there. The instant he saw me his eyes went wide. He cried, "God—my baby!" and ran up and threw his arms around me. He was crying harder than I ever had in my entire life. Papas Steve and Jose were in next, with Papa Dashawn and the others behind them. The room was pretty crowded once all of them were in it.

Papa Jose took my hand and said, "It's okay, honey, you're going to be okay …"

"I'm gonna kill him!" Papa Greg screamed. "That sick son of a bitch, that fucking animal running around, I'm gonna tear out his throat and feed it to his—"

Papa Dashawn smacked him on the head and said, "That's enough. Who does that help, huh?" Papa Greg just buried his face in my neck and went on crying.

"Did they get the guy yet? Has he been arrested?" Papa Steve said.

"No," I said. "I, um … I haven't reported it yet. I don't know if I'm going to."

That made them all pretty quiet, so while they all looked at each other, not sure what to say next, I went on, "I'm still … I'm still not sure about all this. Maybe I was leading him on, you know? I shouldn't have kissed him, I shouldn't have gone to his room."

"None of that matters," said Papa Quack. "None of that implies consent. You always have a right to say 'no'."

"You can't blame yourself," said Papa Jose

"You want us to help you pack?" said Papa Otto.

"No, I'm—no, guys, I don't need to leave school. I'm fine. Really, I'm gonna be fine. Why should I let that asshole derail my education?"

Again, they all looked to each other, unsure. Papa Arturo said, "If you change your mind, or if you ever need anything at all, just tell us."

"I'm fine. Really."

They all closed in for a big group hug, and they kissed me one after the other on my cheeks and forehead. Papa Greg was the last to let go of me, still sobbing. Papa Steve took him in his arms as they left.

The last thing to do that night was text BoJack.

"Hey. Sorry, some stuff came up and I won't be able to call this weekend. Talk soon though."

"Okay, no problem," was what he wrote back, followed a few seconds later with, "Don't get in too much trouble now," with a winking emoji.

My dads stayed in a nearby hotel for the rest of the weekend, and I spent most of my time with them. But pretty soon they had no choice but to return home, and I had to return to my classes. They made me promise to be on the first flight to Kansas the instant I needed it, then they were gone.

I didn't know what to do. Every ounce of me wanted to forget any of this happened, to just keep going to class as if everything were fine. But it wasn't fine. How is a woman ever supposed to feel safe again after being invaded so profoundly? I had to report it. If he were removed from campus, maybe then the whole world wouldn't feel so hostile, so on Monday I went to the dean of students.

That week's therapy session was going to be a fun one. No sense denying anything, as the moment I got there he could see with his trained psychiatry eye that something was amiss. He kept his face neutral, but shifted in his seat a bit as I told him the story.

"My dads are acting normal on Facebook, but I can tell things aren't the same at home. Papa Greg isn't even talking to anyone."

"What did you think when your fathers Quackers and Jose told you it wasn't your fault?"

"I mean, I _suppose_ they're right. But I still feel like I could have done something to avoid this."

"They are right, of course. But these things you're feeling, uncertainty, self-blame, they're incredibly common in people who have gone through the sort of thing you have."

"Isn't it stupid, though? Why should I feel like it's my fault I got attacked?"

"It's hard to accept a random universe," he said. "When something horrible happens to someone, even to ourselves, we want to believe that something we did brought it down on us, because the alternative, that bad things happen to good people for essentially no reason, is even more horrifying."

I went through my classes almost on autopilot, and outside of class I spent all my time shut up in my room, watching Netflix and ordering food delivered to my door. It seemed like a good enough coping mechanism until art history class. I came into the back of the room and there he was, sitting near the front. Big deal, I thought, but all the same I sat around the back, as far from him as I could get. He was facing the front of the room and didn't even see me, but in my mind's eye I kept seeing his face looming over me, like a monster's. I tried to hold it together. I breathed slowly, in and out, trying to get my emotions under control without making a scene, but I only felt myself becoming more panicked until I couldn't bear it anymore. I picked up my stuff and got out of there, maybe not as quietly as I would have liked, and in the hallway I leaned my face into the wall and cried and breathed until I had control of myself again.

I didn't leave my room again for the rest of the weekend. On Sunday, I didn't think I could put it off again, so I called BoJack. I greeted him in as steady a voice as I could manage, but he paused and, after a moment, said, "Hey, you're not hungover or anything, are you?"

That's what I was afraid of. "No, why?" I said.

"Your voice just sounds kinda different, that's all."

"Nothing gets by you, does it? I just hurt my wrist a bit. It's fine."

"Hey, I hear you. I concussed myself trying to do a backflip off a concrete barrier on a dare one time. Also I was drunk. You sure you're all right?"

"It's fine, BoJack. I just fell."

"Take care of yourself, and get some rest."

"Thanks, BoJack."

The day of the hearing arrived. I was given an advocate to speak for me before a panel of nine school administrators, four men and five women, and they took turns asking me questions. It was hard for me to recall details of that night, not the least because I literally had trouble remembering and had to be careful not to accidentally contradict myself. Then one of them, an old swan lady, started pressing into why I had entered his room alone, and why I had kissed him. Her tone had become sharply more adversarial, until my advocate reminded her that kissing doesn't constitute consent for sex. She stopped, but the vibes I got from all nine of them were that they were skeptical—skeptical that whatever had happened wasn't consensual, like I was just one of those girls who regretted it afterward. And so I left there, feeling like I'd been assaulted a second time. I dropped art history and tried to return to my routine, but when the news finally came that the school was going to take no action, I was dumbstruck.

I had recurring nightmares all through those weeks, but after the hearing I had a particularly interesting one. I was in this sort of prehistoric jungle, a primordial place with strange creatures lurking everywhere. I was walking, trying to find my way somewhere, when I came across a pit of quicksand. I crept in to look at it, and like an idiot I tripped and got my arms and upper body stuck in the mud. My legs were still on solid ground, so I tried to crawl backwards to pull myself out, but a hand shot out of the mud and grabbed my wrist, like a zombie hand popping out of the ground in one of those movies. The zombie hand kept hold of me and pulled like it was trying to pull me into the mud with it. And while I was struggling with that, a figure quite like a huge zebra came up behind me. He grabbed my thigh and crouched down, but just then the zombie's other hand shot out and grabbed the zebra and pulled him, screaming, into the mud. The zombie let go of me, and in an instant there was no sign of either of them save a handful of bubbles. I crawled up out of there, and when I woke up I felt a great sense of relief, like there was someone looking out for me.

When I told Dr. Kasner about this, he asked, "Were you wearing primitive clothing yourself in this jungle, or was it your normal clothes? In other words, were you part of this world or an unwelcome visitor?"

"I don't remember really thinking about it, but I think it was my normal clothes," I said.

"So you were lost somewhere you didn't belong. Your perception of the world now that the system's let you down. You feel like the world you knew is gone, replaced by a lawless wilderness in which you're a stranger."

"Maybe. What about the quicksand, though, and the strange zombie-thing that tried to pull me in?"

"Just a few of the many dangers of this jungle? Quicksand and zombies are both well-worn film clichés."

"I guess, but I only had myself to blame for falling in the stupid thing. Lingering self-blame I guess. I'm still confused about the zombie, though. I thought it was gonna pull me in at first, but then it took the other guy and disappeared. It protected me."

"Sometimes dreams aren't as straightforward as we'd like. It could represent your wish for your attacker to fall victim to the same chaos of the world that victimized you."

"I don't know, that doesn't really sound right. You know, BoJack once showed me these … BoJack!"

"Yes?"

"BoJack once showed me these tar pits in LA, the ones with the mammoths preserved in them. BoJack, the depressed former alcoholic, stuck in the tar pit of his life, pulling me down with him. But if I told him what happened to me, he'd smash that guy's head against a wall like a ripe honeydew and then stomp the remains to bits while I watched. God, what it would be to watch him beg for mercy against someone who can stand up against him."

"Hollyhock …" He seemed to be considering his next words very carefully. "Are you sure you want to use your brother this way? Don't you think it might be unfair to him, to make him your instrument for revenge?"

"Relax," I said. "I'm not gonna actually do it. It's just comforting to think that I could."

On Sunday I phoned BoJack again. "How's your shoot going?" I asked.

He launched into his rant as though he'd been chomping at the bit for this moment. "You've never met a more joyless lot than these Crustacean-Americans. I thought my line 'don't butter me up' would lend some much-needed levity to the proceedings while keeping the message, but you can't get through to these guys! Then they still only had those boring sugar cookies on set even though I _asked nicely_ for chocolate ones over a week ago. I swear to God, no person in history has been or will be more assaulted than I am, BoJack Horseman, at this very moment."

And you know what? Strangely I felt this serene warmth and comfort come over me. "The whole world's just a huge dumpster fire, isn't it," I said.

"Well, at least they had those muffins I like," he added. "So what about you? Not having too much fun at college, are you?"

"Nah. You know, I'm just … doing the college thing." I paused. A crazy idea came to me, one I couldn't resist. "So I forgot to mention I'm on a break from school. It just started this weekend."

"Really?" he said.

"Yeah. But can you believe stupid Lisa didn't tell me she was making plans with her family? Now I'm stuck here all on my own with nothing to do."

"Damn it, Lisa, what's the matter with you?"

"Frickin' Lisa, am I right?"

"Go to hell, Lisa!"

"Choke on vomit, Lisa!"

"I hope you die of dysentery, Lisa! Who's Lisa again?"

I quickly went on. "Anyway, I was thinking about coming to LA for a bit, just to hang, if, you know, you're not too busy."

"Oh. Uh … Yeah, well, of course you can come for, um, for a few days, if that's what you want."

"I think if I hurry I can still catch a flight tonight. I'll text you the arrival time."

"Right. No problem."

I arrived early the following morning. Stepping into BoJack's house, I could hardly believe this was the place with which I'd had such a mixed history. Now it felt like the only familiar place left in the world. The home I grew up in was never going to be the same, but this? Good and bad, this was exactly as I remembered. BoJack suggested some things to do around LA (you never run out of things to do in that city), but I told him I was tired from school and just wanted to relax. I went to put my bags away while he went to grab a soda for me and an O'Doul's for himself. I heard a _crash_ , and before I knew anything I'd cried out and jumped and spun around.

"Sorry," he said, looking only a little less surprised than I was. "I just dropped one of the bottles. Don't worry, it didn't break."

"Right," I said. "Sorry. It just startled me, is all."

He brought the drinks to the couch, put on a DVD box set, and there we sat, like bean bags, hardly moving for two days straight. We binged a season and a half of some cop show while we binged delivery pizza, Chinese, ice cream, and whatever else we had even the slightest fancy for.

"So hey," he said. "I dunno if I mentioned it, but I've been thinking about that wilderness thing. You know, the one Tara was trying to get me to do."

"Yeah?" I said.

"Yeah. I think I'm gonna do it. I still think it's stupid, but maybe you're right. A couple weeks' vacation in the desert can't be so bad, right? At least I'll be out of _your_ hair for a while."

And I had this feeling like I'd been punched in the gut, or that the floor was moving out from under me and I was going into free fall. Tears flooded up from inside me which I couldn't hold back. It was awful—the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was burst into tears in front of BoJack. I'd have rather been struck by lightning or been plunged into the core of the earth. I choked on sobs while he just stared at me, dumbfounded. After some seconds, all he could think to do was get up from his seat, come over to mine, and put a hand on my shoulder.

I pushed him back. "It's all right," I said. "I'm all right. Please go sit down. I'm all right."

He finally got the message. He sat in his seat with his back up straight, averting his gaze out the window and drumming his fingers on his knees.

"My wrist is still bothering me," I said.

"Oh. You … want some ice for it?" he said.

"It's all right now."

"Okay, cool." He looked anything but convinced. He sat there, still looking outward and still drumming away with his fingers.

"So, Hollyhock … Is something wrong?"

And I could see myself doing it. It would be the simplest thing, just open my mouth and pronounce three simple words— _I was raped—_ and then the moment I spoke his name he'd be as good as a smear on the pavement. It tingled on the edge of my lips, it ached to burst out of me, but all I could say was, "Of course not."

"Good," he said quickly, "good, because if something were wrong, you would tell me, right? So since you're not telling me, that really means nothing is wrong, right?"

"I promise you nothing is wrong."

"Okay. Okay, good." He still looked like things were nowhere near good, but he didn't press it any further.

So that brings us to the present. The next day I told BoJack I was going to meet some friends for the rest of the break, though the truth was I just didn't want to miss _too_ much of my classes. So now I'm on the plane back to Connecticut, and you've borne the fruits of my five hours of boredom.

Thanks for listening, Journal. It'd be great to stay and get to know you more, but unfortunately you're getting that match as soon as I get credit from Dr. Kasner for writing all this, so … Sorry. It's nothing personal, and for what it's worth, I'm sure it's nice up in Journal Heaven. But you know, if I'm being totally honest I have to admit it feels a _little_ bit better to have gotten this out. Like I've got a little less weight on my shoulders, you know? Still feels like I should burn you to protect all the secrets in here, but …

I dunno. We'll see.


End file.
